Re: TRM - Morbidity has set in, or not?
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 05:52:47 GMT
Message-ID: <PMdag.4787$S7.88_at_news-server.bigpond.net.au>
J M Davitt wrote:
> Paul Mansour wrote:
>> J M Davitt wrote regarding inverted indexes: >> >>> This has huge significance: all values in a date domain covering >>> hundreds of years require fewer than 100,000 values. Time-of-day >>> precise to a second requires only 86,000 values. Given these domains, >>> adding records to a system would require no new values -- the domains >>> can be established before the first data arrive >>
[..]
> TRM, on the other hand, would maintain exactly one ordered set of
> values for the domain and everything referencing the same date
> would refer to the same value. Indices aren't really needed. Index
> maintenance - the dreaded B-tree "rotate the root" operation - would
> never occur. Sure, as birth dates are corrected and licenses are
> renewed, the value a given record refers to would change -- but the
> values remain undisturbed and there's no need for index maintenance.
> There is, of course, a trade-off: the record reconstruction table
> has to be maintained. That's significant work and the techniques for
> doing it efficiently are, AFAIK, a closely-held secret. (Not every-
> thing's covered by the patent, you know. When you apply for a patent,
> you have to tell the world how you did it. Some of the most
> profitable industrial secrets are not patented.)
Cheers, Frank Received on Tue May 16 2006 - 07:52:47 CEST